Amazon’s Event: Questions About the Expected Smartphone

Amazon invited developers, media and others to an event in Seattle today where the company is expected to show a smartphone that can track eye movements and is capable of displaying 3-D images.

The phone is the latest piece of hardware from the Web-commerce giant, but it has been years in the making. Here are some of the questions we’d like to see answered at the event:

What Does It Cost? One way Amazon could set its smartphone apart is on the price tag. The flagship devices from Apple and Samsung Electronics all launched north of $500, though they are largely accessible to the average U.S. customer thanks to the subsidies that come with wireless contracts.

Amazon could shake up the field by offering a quality device at an approachable price without the contract baggage. What price would work is the question. Google’s Moto X didn’t catch on at around $400. Amazon historically has been willing to live with razor-thin profit margins to build up its base of customers, so it could theoretically go even lower.

What’s With the 3-D (Or, How Can Amazon Differentiate Beyond Cost)? Amazon is expected to distinguish its phone through technology that lets its smartphone show 3-D images. The phone is also expected to track eye movements, something Samsung tried with its Galaxy phone to little success.

It will be interesting to see just how advanced is the 3-D display — is it “help me Obi-wan Kenobi” hologram quality, or gimmicky early days. Amazon’s teaser video would have you believe we’re about to take a great leap forward. More importantly, though, are the practical uses. One could be in e-commerce — Amazon’s bread-and-butter — where shoppers who are used to swiping from product to product could now stare at 360-degree images of clothes, toys and other goods.

How Will It Fit Into Prime? If Amazon comes in at a high price along the lines of the Galaxy or iPhone, it will need to pile on the innovations to lure customers away. There are has some cards it can play.

Amazon has generated buzz with its “Mayday” live-help button on the Kindle. It could tightly integrate the smartphone into the Prime universe, making it that much easier for loyal customers to play Prime songs or watch Prime video from the cloud. Or it could find a way to cut down on friction — or offer plain-old discounts — when buying from Amazon’s many stores, making it that much more likely those customers won’t wander to e-commerce competitors. It could also pull a sheet from Apple’s manual and have the phone work with other Amazon devices, like Fire TV.

What are the Specs? Rumors and leaks aside (and there are plenty), we don’t know officially know much about what Amazon’s phone looks like or how it will perform.

3-D is fancy but consumers want to know meat-and-potato details: screen size, locked or unlocked, home screen, pixel density, battery life, storage, camera quality, navigating between apps. Those spec-sheet questions go on and on. Another one: What operating system does it run? That will be important to developers. The phone is likely to employ a forked — or customized — version of Android (like the Kindle Fire) that doesn’t have access to the Google Play store of apps. Amazon will need to convince developers that it’s worth their time coding for Amazon’s environment, especially when Apple and Samsung boast millions of apps.